Influenced by Kafka, Orwell, and Kubrick, Gilliam's darkly humorous futuristic satire is narratively flawed and excessive in many ways, but it displays its creator's wildly vivid imagination and is intermittently witty.

If anyone ever doubts the visionary significance of Terry Gilliam's once bright genius as a filmmaker of enormous depth and cynical humor, you need only to visit upon his career-topping 1985 masterpiece of surreal satire.